ASHINGTON - The Clinton administration's policy barring open homosexuals from military service works and should be preserved, Republican candidates Senator John McCain and Steve Forbes said yesterday. Both Democrats running for president have disowned the policy.
McCain, a former naval officer and prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he would have senior officers review the policy, but added: ''I support the policy. I believe that it's working.''
The administration's ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy bans gays only if they make their homosexuality public. The policy was developed as a compromise between the military's pre-1990s position of barring all homosexuals and President Clinton's original plan to remove restrictions on gay or lesbian service.
Vice President Al Gore, a Vietnam veteran, and his Democratic opponent Bill Bradley take the view that gays should have open access to military service, just as they can become firefighters, police officers or members of Congress.
Gay activists who met with Clinton last week said the president told them the ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy was a failure.
Both McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Forbes, a wealthy publisher, said those civilian jobs cannot be compared to the armed forces.
''The US military is a very unique culture,'' McCain said on CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''People live very close together under very difficult conditions.''
He quoted General Colin Powell, chief of staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that war's commander on the ground, General Norman Schwarzkopf, as saying the Clinton policy works toward preserving unit cohesion.
On ''Fox News Sunday,'' Forbes said: ''I don't think the government should be in the business of making laws about it. But I do think, in terms of the military, the military should not have to take open gays,'' he said.
The Republican front-runner, Texas Governor George W. Bush, also has endorsed the Clinton policy.
''The `don't ask, don't tell' policy, despite problems with it - as there is with every policy that has to do with personnel - is working,'' McCain said.
''In the context of a political campaign,'' he said, ''to change an administration position without consulting our military leaders I think is not the proper approach to this very difficult and sensitive issue.''
While he opposes openly gay people serving in the military, McCain said yesterday that he saw no reason an avowed homosexual could not serve as president some day.
In a telephone interview, McCain said a candidate's religion or sexual orientation should not be a bar to the presidency.
He said there was no reason a Jew or a Muslim could not be president and the same applied to homosexuals.
''People make judgments based on a candidate's qualifications. I don't think that would rule anybody out,'' he said.
Asked how he could envisage a homosexual president, who would be commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, and yet oppose openly gay people serving in the ranks, McCain said the presence of gays in the ranks would hurt unit cohesion.
''The president doesn't have to serve in the military in a unit. This would be disruptive to unit cohesion and the current policy has worked,'' he said.
